The Vow (2020) s01e02 Episode Script
Viscera
1
ESP is a methodology
for optimizing or enhancing
human experience and behavior.
Some of the
questions that the coaches asked
were just so spot on.
If you could have
or be anything,
what would that feel like?
Raniere proposed this map
of how everything worked.
It was a
unified theory to explain
why people do what they
do and how to change that.
This is a code to
understand myself.
It was like, holy shit,
I can be the ideal version of myself,
to write my own character.
The deeper the commitment,
the better and
clearer life becomes.
Hey, can you talk quick?
Bonnie got there first.
If I look at those women,
they're all not doing well.
It took me longer.
There's a lot of
things I'm starting to see
about the organization.
It's not right.
I feel like my life
and body was stolen.
I want to have that
life. I want to get it back.
Hmm.
Okay,
so I feel wounded right now.
And I've been trying really hard
to turn it around and stay positive,
and, you know, trust that,
that good always wins.
That,
that light wins over darkness.
But Keith head-fucked us,
the girls that were in that group,
specifically, in a way that
I don't know that everyone
got head-fucked like that.
So
So that's the daily struggle.
Huh.
- Well
- But, yeah.
Hmm.
When I first met Keith,
my gut feeling was like
Ew! You know,
something's a bit gross.
He would kiss you on the lips.
That's just kind of what he did.
And everyone else did it,
as well.
But at the same time,
I had really enjoyed the five-day
and was very moved and
he was the creator of that,
and so I need to like,
let go of that,
and just see what's
right in front of me,
which is a guy who's
saying he wants to help me.
If this guy's created all these things
that are helping so many people,
like, who cares about the
kissing on the lips thing?
Mm-hmm.
Keith said to me, you know,
you could be in Simply Human,
the singing group of ESP.
That's when I started spending
a lot of time with Allison Mack.
Allison saw Keith as like a guru,
a spiritual master,
and she was very
committed to the mission.
If we actually
understood compassion,
the world would be
a much better place.
Like,
not even the world. Like .00 percent.
Three percent of the
world. If they could just have
this little dose of love,
everything would change.
Everything.
- Everything. -
Are you ready for promotions?
Our proctors have met
various ethical standards
to qualify to enter into
an independent contractor-ship
on one of our career paths.
- You ready? - Yes.
Bonnie Piesse.
Allison Mack.
Our new one-stripe
full proctors.
I was amazed by the EM tech.
Ta-da! - Man: Yeah!
Yay! Thank you.
- - Ow!
Where you break a Pavlovian link
to help a person
overcome a limiting belief.
And I wanted to
do that right away.
But then you're told that you need
to wait till you're a two-stripe coach
to even start learning the tech.
Then you had to
go out and practice.
And so I,
I practiced two and a half years.
Like,
1,500 EMs to get to two stripe.
I was told that I
could earn money
by the time I got to EM one.
And by the time I got there,
they said,
"Oh, no,
we've changed the standards."
Now you have to pass, like,
we're thinking, EM five.
Financially,
I was going deeper into debt.
I was kind of just getting by
going to "Star
Wars" conventions,
going and playing
shows at colleges.
Thank you so much!
It wasn't working.
And Keith kept saying to us,
"Give it a few months and you
guys will be earning great money."
But instead,
it felt like once I got to proctor,
suddenly I was more
obligated to give for free.
And so you're strung along,
practicing, practicing, practicing.
Then Keith invited some of
us into development teams.
And that's when the workload
started to get heavier and heavier.
A typical day during
that time would be
up at five
shove some breakfast in my body,
run a yoga class,
get feedback from Keith,
coach intensives,
go and give free EMs.
As a facilitator, you couldn't really
get up and even use the bathroom.
I wouldn't have a lunch break.
I would eat on
the way in the car.
Meetings, meetings,
meetings. I was still trying to uphold
my obligation to
being a proctor.
And then drive to
Simply Human practice.
And then I'd be on the
phone practicing EMs
until two or three.
- - Up at five.
So like,
we were all running on no sleep.
And even as you're
working 23 hours a day,
you're getting feedback of like,
"Why aren't you doing more?"
What is comfort? Think
about it for a second.
It was about productivity,
but it was about
pushing through.
Like,
we were taught in everything
that to have character you need to,
like,
overcome your body feelings.
And you don't need as much
rest as you think and, like, it's
It shows you how strong you are.
Comfort is like an addiction,
and when you find comfort,
you try to be more comfortable,
and just everything comfortable
and we don't push
our bodies too much,
and comfortable, comfortable,
comfortable, right?
The more we indulge
in this addiction,
the more we have to lose.
So it feels like tough love.
It feels like you've got these
people who care about you,
who are saying,
"You need to do this.
"This is all for your own good.
And for the good of the world."
And you're even thankful. You're like,
"Thank you for, for pushing me,
and like,
trying to help me get through this."
So welcome
to the world of discomfort.
If you are not uncomfortable,
you are not working on anything.
Your life should be a life of
discomfort if you want to grow.
If you don't want to grow, hey,
sent shit away. Your choice.
I found myself, like,
sitting in Clifton Park going,
"What are, like
"How'd I get here?
This is my life now."
And that didn't feel good.
And I was looking
around at all these people
that just didn't
seem joyful to me.
And I was like,
I feel like everyone's being squished.
And I started to see
red flags with Allison.
I noticed that she was getting
obsessed with her weight.
Like, it started to feel weird.
And I couldn't really
put my finger on it.
But it was just like
a feeling that I had.
The coaches didn't
really deny intuition,
but they led you to
believe that your intuition
was just a feeling,
just a viscera,
and that you
needed to try to fix it.
Like, if you had a normal
emotional reaction to something,
they explained that it was
just the world controlling you,
and it was something that you
needed to overcome and work through.
We want to empower people,
particularly the way our will
interfaces with our body,
our neurology, our viscera.
And we have these different
techniques that help people,
if you will,
drive their vehicle better.
In exo/eso, we were taught that
just like you can
stretch your body,
you can also stretch your
emotions and unlock feelings
that are holding
back your growth.
They give you exercises where
you can literally open up the viscera,
and expand it into, like, joy.
Find yourself
in a comfortable position.
Maybe lay on the ground, and
just relax your body.
Now transition to the
feeling of suffering.
Think back to the
last time you suffered.
Just feel that feeling.
Now intensify it.
Bring it up to the most intense
that you can make the suffering.
To 25, up to 50.
Seventy-five.
Push a little harder.
All the way up to 100!
One-hundred percent suffering!
Now switch.
Bring up this opposite emotion.
What is it for you?
What do you call it?
Now start to intensify
that even further.
Bring it all the way
up to the 100 of it.
One-hundred percent
of the opposite emotion.
What is this?
What do you call it?
Have you felt it before?
And now you're going to
switch back to suffering.
Go ahead. Switch.
Were you able to
bring it back up?
And now switch.
How do you feel now
that you've stretched,
and explored your internal
emotional experience?
And that's great,
in a lot of ways.
It feels powerful.
It feels like you can go out
and achieve the
things that you want.
And that's in your hands.
But looking back,
I can see how that's really misused.
It's a way to get you to
ignore your gut feelings.
I had to tread really carefully.
Like I couldn't really say
what I thought to Mark.
He was very defensive.
And he'd fight back and say,
"You have to stop."
But I couldn't stop.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Keith used to
teach some of us that
on the path to enlightenment,
you'd reach this
barren wasteland.
Like,
you reach a space of nothing
before you find
this ultimate joy.
Joy feels like your,
your cells are gonna burst apart.
As a matter of fact,
the more pain we feel,
the more we feel,
uh, alive in a body.
My body was
starting to fall apart.
And I was having
blood sugar crashes.
And I felt like I
couldn't breathe
when I was in the classrooms.
And then Mark encouraged
me to talk to Keith.
- Yep.
- Well
Um-hmm.
- You know?
- Mm-hmm.
Right.
And it just
No.
Usually, I had just obeyed.
But at that point, my intuition was,
like, screaming at me.
It was like,
"You have to get out."
Before I left,
Allison invited me for a walk.
She was kind of
at her skinniest.
She looked like her back
bones were sticking out.
But I confronted her and I said,
"I think you're sick.
"You're not eating.
"Like, there's a problem,
and you need to address it,
and start eating."
And she said, "Well,
Keith is measuring my calories.
And he says as long as I'm
having my period, I'm fine."
And then she said
that she'd made
a lifetime vow to Keith.
And I think she said it was
a vow of devotion.
And she lifted up her shirt
and showed me her belly chain.
She said, "And this is to
symbolize the vow that I've made."
I certainly didn't
understand it.
But I didn't see
the darkness in it
that was really
there at that point.
I reached out to
someone who had quit
and who had kind
of dropped hints
that they knew
what was going on.
And I felt like they knew
something that I didn't.
I just said, like,
"Would you trust me enough
to tell me what you see?
"'Cause I don't intellectually
know what I'm looking at.
I know what I'm feeling."
And she said, "Well,
in a high-control group"
And I don't even remember
the rest of the sentence,
but, like,
when I heard high-control group
It I didn't know what it was,
but it just doesn't
sound very good.
And I actually asked,
"Do you think Keith knows?
Like,
maybe we need to tell him."
And she was like, "I think it's
deliberately designed that way."
And so I called him and I said,
you know, "Here's what I see.
"I see that all your
companies are
"built on abuse,
obligation, guilt,
and coercion. I
can't support it."
And he said
"Oh, I think, you know,
"there are some issues
that you never worked.
"You seem to have a
a commitment to being a victim."
We have a
fight or flight mechanism,
which triggers this
thing we call fear.
When we're fearful,
when we're making
decisions based on fear,
we are at effect.
It's the lowest
state of existence.
As you make your
decision based on fear,
now it's not your
psyche controlling,
it's the body and the world
controlling your psyche.
Now we have joy. What is joy?
And what's the opposite of joy?
We talk about joy and misery.
When someone is miserable,
they feel small.
Misery is constrictive.
It's self-oriented,
and it's destructive.
You know,
it's involved with suffering,
self-pity,
things along those lines,
or malice.
No.
So, I lost my opportunity
to talk to people freely,
because
I think a lot of
people saw it as
dishonorable and
weak that I left.
I feel unsure of myself.
We were taught you
need to push through.
It shows you how strong you are.
Like,
maybe I really am a bad person
for questioning and
being disloyal and leaving.
Maybe I'm the problem.
Hi. You've called Bonnie.
Leave a message and I'll get
back to you as soon as I can.
"Finally, I wish to remain
on good terms with the company
and have no ethical or unresolved
issues with NXIVM and ESP."
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I finally
opened up with a friend.
I just, like, let it all out,
and told her everything.
And she said, "You know,
you might need to break up with him.
You might need to leave him."
It's so sad that a
lot of relationships
go from being great
in the beginning,
to there's all this
resentment and anger,
and they just seem to get
kind of more and more bitter.
This helps you resolve those things,
so that you can
make your
relationship get better.
This marriage is one of the
most successful things in my life.
For certain.
I believe we have a really
successful relationship,
and it didn't just happen.
Hi. You've called Bonnie.
Leave a message and I'll get
back to you as soon as I can.
So you want to interview me or something,
or?
Light bulbs out.
Okay, so you're gonna sit there.
I'll interview you, and film you?
So,
um, Keith,
in the time that I spent with you,
it's clear that you have
a whole series of ideas
that are really amazing.
Well, first of all,
I, I don't know if the
ideas are amazing or not.
I
My assumption is that I,
I have some,
uh, relatively strong ideas,
uh,
that I communicate pretty well.
My name is Mark Vicente.
I'm a filmmaker from the
apartheid era South Africa.
George Lucas had as his
mentor Joseph Campbell,
an American mythologist.
I have as my mentor
an American scientist
and philosopher by the
name of Keith Raniere.
He asked me a question,
and the question
he asked me was,
"What is bravery?"
What does that mean?
Well,
there's a dictionary definition.
But in the deepest sense,
it means to be able to bear pain.
You know,
you look at all the people who
are allegedly enlightened.
All the different gurus,
whether it be the Buddha,
the Jesus, or, or Gandhi.
They're not just
sitting on a pillow.
They're not just
being fed grapes
and doing nothing, you know?
And struggle,
there's nothing negative about it.
It's the nature of life.
When I first met Keith,
he said to me,
"You know,
it'd be good if you just moved here
so we could, like,
have more of these conversations."
Albany, anybody? Albany?
It wasn't
really in Albany proper.
It was more north
in Clifton Park.
Everybody knew, pretty much,
where everybody lived.
So you'd always run into people.
And in between,
we're just the civilians.
You know,
those people who just live there.
And then at night,
you know,
you were expected to go to volleyball.
It was like, you know,
midnight to 7:00 a.m.
And around, um, 10:30 or 11,
the A team and Keith
Raniere would show up.
Help, help. Help!
Why volleyball?
I didn't understand
volleyball at first.
But it became a
big social event.
When intensives were going on,
you could have like 50,
60 people in the bleachers,
basically just watching,
EM-ing each other,
whispering to each other, talking,
and then in between games,
everybody would gaggle around him,
you know,
and ask him question
after question after question,
and we'd stand there for
like half an hour sometimes,
cooling down
while he was talking,
and then we'd play again.
You know,
he was like the rock star.
Is that okay?
And in the end, it was all about
- seeing him.
- tries to handle the ball.
That's what everybody
said. It's a chance to see him.
I basically try every
day to reach him.
We're gonna Let's talk about
projects. Let's talk about things.
And it's very frustrating,
because he won't respond.
And I go to volleyball,
like, three times a week,
and I'm talking to him and say,
"When are we gonna start?
When are we gonna start?
When are we gonna start?"
And it's like he just
Almost like he forgot.
And so I'm in this state
of complete insecurity.
Like, I just uprooted my life.
Six weeks go by.
On my birthday,
seven o'clock in the morning,
Keith Raniere calls me.
And he says, "Hey,
you wanna take a walk?" I mean
And I'm like fuckin' ready.
You know, I'm there.
I've got my recorder with me,
I've got a little
note pad with me,
and I'm so excited.
He's gonna work with me now.
Uh-huh.
Nancy said to me,
"You know what?
"It would be great if you'd
document Keith now that you're here,
'cause you know how to shoot and
everything. Could you document him?"
Mark is trying to film me.
I'll just keep on asking and
shooting until someone says no.
Okay. Very cool idea.
- You guys ready?
- Mm-hmm.
I started shooting,
like, in 2005,
and then a number of people
said to me they'd like to learn.
Switch it to "camera."
So I began this program
of like teaching people,
you know, how to shoot,
how to do sound,
you know, how to edit.
- Cool! -
And it grew to people,
you know, recording with audio,
you had people
shooting with video.
And then you had, like,
people that were basically
writing down what he said
and categorizing it, you know.
It was,
it was a whole operation constantly.
Good.
And he just said,
like, it's important to
document this because,
you know, we're talking about
the generations in the future.
Like,
at some point in the future,
my hope is this
work that we're doing
will end up in universities,
will end up in books.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if
the world could look back and say,
"Oh, that's what happened."
I take walks with him at like,
2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m.
And when we're done, I go home
and I transcribe the entire thing.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And in that moment,
I remember thinking,
this guy fuckin' knows me
like nobody has ever known me.
Like,
nobody in my family knows me. He knows me.
And I'm astounded,
and I remember going I
didn't sleep much that night,
and I was writing in journals,
and writing about, like,
all these things, and,
and how much that it impacted me.
And how much I
yearned to be this
I yearned to be like him.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Right.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Over time,
these ideas evolved into a screenplay
called "Carbon Crimes."
It follows Joe,
an idealistic aide to
a powerful Senator.
So, Joe,
who's spirited and impulsive.
Wants to prove he's good.
Passionate and hopeful.
Struggles with lying.
He meets Erik Einhaert,
a world-renowned scientist,
professor, and humanitarian.
Yes.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Einhaert takes
Joe under his wing,
and challenges Joe to
question all of his assumptions
about the entire universe.
So he gave me all the ideas.
And part of it was cool,
'cause it was like,
"Oh, now I'm like Nancy."
Like,
he's downloading all the ideas to me
and I'm gonna, like,
turn this into something, you know.
So she would
turn it into modules,
and I was gonna
turn this into a movie.
Mm-hmm.
I'm in heaven.
We're doing an EM in a movie,
which is all I
ever wanted to do.
I suppose I was like this
very eager student.
So for seven years of my life,
I call him every single day.
Hello.
- Hi. - Hi!
How's it going there?
Correct.
Right. Is that
Yeah.
I felt that
there was a closeness.
You know,
the highest IQ in the world is telling you
that you're the one.
You're smart enough to get me.
That's I don't know. It
could be pretty intoxicating.
Nancy said to me,
"It's extraordinary,
this relationship you have with
Keith." And I was like, "Why?"
She says,
"'Cause you're his only male friend."
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I have the
Vanguard. I have the Prefect.
- I have Sarah, my business partner.
- Namaste.
I have all these people that,
like,
anytime I need anything,
I'll say, "Listen.
Hey,
can I talk something through with you?"
They'll say, "Of course you can.
Let's go for a walk." You know?
Actually,
let's have everybody stand up for a second.
For the first time in my life,
I had the feeling of like,
I am with me, and I love me,
and I remember just being like,
"Oh,
my God. This is what self-love is."
This feeling is the thing
every single human
being in the world wants.
It's priceless.
Right.
You know, like
Yeah. Yeah.
When Bonnie leaves in 2017,
I'm like,
"What the fuck am I gonna do?"
If I took in what she said,
it was,
it was pretty horrifying.
Because I'd have to question
Questioning him
felt like I'd question
everything about myself.
And I wanted her just to stop.
Like, "Can we stop? Can we
not talk about this right now?
Can we,
can we talk about it some other time?"
And she was insistent.
I was like, constantly,
every day,
trying to get him to understand.
Putting evidence
in front of him,
begging him to listen,
begging him to read cult books.
He begged me to
not keep pushing him,
and to let him have
his own process with it.
But he was still
talking to Keith.
And I was like,
"Fuck." You know, like, all
All the work,
all the progress that I was
trying to make with him would then be,
like,
flushed down the toilet.
You know what Bonnie said to me?
Like, "What will it take?" I said,
"Data."
Soon after I left,
another person
left and came to LA,
and we started talking
about everything.
She gave me information
about things that she'd seen
that were very concerning.
And she agreed to talk to Mark.
Mm-hmm.
I'm like,
"What the fuck is going on here?"
There's something wrong.
Keith is amazing,
but something is fucked up.
Mm!
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yep.
It was very hard,
because you're going
up against the leader.
And in this case,
a leader who had spent 12 years
working his way into my psyche.
Yep.
- Boom. There you go. Yeah.
- Oh, yeah. That felt good.
Right.
Um
Yes, yeah.
I I
You feel
like you're going crazy.
He got my best friend
to basically spy on me.
Every single thing that
I was suspecting him of,
I kept on explaining it away,
like,
maybe there's a good reason.
That day I allowed myself
to like question,
what if there's not?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
He's lying to me.
Twelve years of
spending time with him,
thinking that every single
thing that comes out of his mouth
is honest.
Wait, okay, so that's a lie.
What if it's not the only one?
It was like there was
a crack in the dam.
You collapse in a puddle
of, of horror and shock.
That's waking up.
It's a very,
very deep and disturbing
dark night of the soul.
We went for a hike,
and he said to me,
"My eyes are open,
and I want you to know that I
am loyal to you above them."
And for the first time,
he started asking me questions
about what I thought.
Hello, this is Mark.
Please leave a
message after the beep.
"Dear Keith, Nancy,
"and members of
the executive board,
"as I've expressed in many
different ways over the last years,
"I've had strong aspirations
"to return my focus
and effort to my career.
"As such,
I am resigning from ESP.
"With respect to the centers,
"I will be discussing
my transition with Sarah,
"and I will apprise the
Greens of which coaches
need to be transferred."
It was the point of no return.
And I now understand
I have to tell Sarah.
Mm-hmm.
When we
switched off the recording,
Sarah tells me that
she is in this thing,
that it's called DOS,
and then she tells me,
um, "They branded me as well."
And I remember going,
something like, "What?
They b They did what?"
What the fuck?
ESP is a methodology
for optimizing or enhancing
human experience and behavior.
Some of the
questions that the coaches asked
were just so spot on.
If you could have
or be anything,
what would that feel like?
Raniere proposed this map
of how everything worked.
It was a
unified theory to explain
why people do what they
do and how to change that.
This is a code to
understand myself.
It was like, holy shit,
I can be the ideal version of myself,
to write my own character.
The deeper the commitment,
the better and
clearer life becomes.
Hey, can you talk quick?
Bonnie got there first.
If I look at those women,
they're all not doing well.
It took me longer.
There's a lot of
things I'm starting to see
about the organization.
It's not right.
I feel like my life
and body was stolen.
I want to have that
life. I want to get it back.
Hmm.
Okay,
so I feel wounded right now.
And I've been trying really hard
to turn it around and stay positive,
and, you know, trust that,
that good always wins.
That,
that light wins over darkness.
But Keith head-fucked us,
the girls that were in that group,
specifically, in a way that
I don't know that everyone
got head-fucked like that.
So
So that's the daily struggle.
Huh.
- Well
- But, yeah.
Hmm.
When I first met Keith,
my gut feeling was like
Ew! You know,
something's a bit gross.
He would kiss you on the lips.
That's just kind of what he did.
And everyone else did it,
as well.
But at the same time,
I had really enjoyed the five-day
and was very moved and
he was the creator of that,
and so I need to like,
let go of that,
and just see what's
right in front of me,
which is a guy who's
saying he wants to help me.
If this guy's created all these things
that are helping so many people,
like, who cares about the
kissing on the lips thing?
Mm-hmm.
Keith said to me, you know,
you could be in Simply Human,
the singing group of ESP.
That's when I started spending
a lot of time with Allison Mack.
Allison saw Keith as like a guru,
a spiritual master,
and she was very
committed to the mission.
If we actually
understood compassion,
the world would be
a much better place.
Like,
not even the world. Like .00 percent.
Three percent of the
world. If they could just have
this little dose of love,
everything would change.
Everything.
- Everything. -
Are you ready for promotions?
Our proctors have met
various ethical standards
to qualify to enter into
an independent contractor-ship
on one of our career paths.
- You ready? - Yes.
Bonnie Piesse.
Allison Mack.
Our new one-stripe
full proctors.
I was amazed by the EM tech.
Ta-da! - Man: Yeah!
Yay! Thank you.
- - Ow!
Where you break a Pavlovian link
to help a person
overcome a limiting belief.
And I wanted to
do that right away.
But then you're told that you need
to wait till you're a two-stripe coach
to even start learning the tech.
Then you had to
go out and practice.
And so I,
I practiced two and a half years.
Like,
1,500 EMs to get to two stripe.
I was told that I
could earn money
by the time I got to EM one.
And by the time I got there,
they said,
"Oh, no,
we've changed the standards."
Now you have to pass, like,
we're thinking, EM five.
Financially,
I was going deeper into debt.
I was kind of just getting by
going to "Star
Wars" conventions,
going and playing
shows at colleges.
Thank you so much!
It wasn't working.
And Keith kept saying to us,
"Give it a few months and you
guys will be earning great money."
But instead,
it felt like once I got to proctor,
suddenly I was more
obligated to give for free.
And so you're strung along,
practicing, practicing, practicing.
Then Keith invited some of
us into development teams.
And that's when the workload
started to get heavier and heavier.
A typical day during
that time would be
up at five
shove some breakfast in my body,
run a yoga class,
get feedback from Keith,
coach intensives,
go and give free EMs.
As a facilitator, you couldn't really
get up and even use the bathroom.
I wouldn't have a lunch break.
I would eat on
the way in the car.
Meetings, meetings,
meetings. I was still trying to uphold
my obligation to
being a proctor.
And then drive to
Simply Human practice.
And then I'd be on the
phone practicing EMs
until two or three.
- - Up at five.
So like,
we were all running on no sleep.
And even as you're
working 23 hours a day,
you're getting feedback of like,
"Why aren't you doing more?"
What is comfort? Think
about it for a second.
It was about productivity,
but it was about
pushing through.
Like,
we were taught in everything
that to have character you need to,
like,
overcome your body feelings.
And you don't need as much
rest as you think and, like, it's
It shows you how strong you are.
Comfort is like an addiction,
and when you find comfort,
you try to be more comfortable,
and just everything comfortable
and we don't push
our bodies too much,
and comfortable, comfortable,
comfortable, right?
The more we indulge
in this addiction,
the more we have to lose.
So it feels like tough love.
It feels like you've got these
people who care about you,
who are saying,
"You need to do this.
"This is all for your own good.
And for the good of the world."
And you're even thankful. You're like,
"Thank you for, for pushing me,
and like,
trying to help me get through this."
So welcome
to the world of discomfort.
If you are not uncomfortable,
you are not working on anything.
Your life should be a life of
discomfort if you want to grow.
If you don't want to grow, hey,
sent shit away. Your choice.
I found myself, like,
sitting in Clifton Park going,
"What are, like
"How'd I get here?
This is my life now."
And that didn't feel good.
And I was looking
around at all these people
that just didn't
seem joyful to me.
And I was like,
I feel like everyone's being squished.
And I started to see
red flags with Allison.
I noticed that she was getting
obsessed with her weight.
Like, it started to feel weird.
And I couldn't really
put my finger on it.
But it was just like
a feeling that I had.
The coaches didn't
really deny intuition,
but they led you to
believe that your intuition
was just a feeling,
just a viscera,
and that you
needed to try to fix it.
Like, if you had a normal
emotional reaction to something,
they explained that it was
just the world controlling you,
and it was something that you
needed to overcome and work through.
We want to empower people,
particularly the way our will
interfaces with our body,
our neurology, our viscera.
And we have these different
techniques that help people,
if you will,
drive their vehicle better.
In exo/eso, we were taught that
just like you can
stretch your body,
you can also stretch your
emotions and unlock feelings
that are holding
back your growth.
They give you exercises where
you can literally open up the viscera,
and expand it into, like, joy.
Find yourself
in a comfortable position.
Maybe lay on the ground, and
just relax your body.
Now transition to the
feeling of suffering.
Think back to the
last time you suffered.
Just feel that feeling.
Now intensify it.
Bring it up to the most intense
that you can make the suffering.
To 25, up to 50.
Seventy-five.
Push a little harder.
All the way up to 100!
One-hundred percent suffering!
Now switch.
Bring up this opposite emotion.
What is it for you?
What do you call it?
Now start to intensify
that even further.
Bring it all the way
up to the 100 of it.
One-hundred percent
of the opposite emotion.
What is this?
What do you call it?
Have you felt it before?
And now you're going to
switch back to suffering.
Go ahead. Switch.
Were you able to
bring it back up?
And now switch.
How do you feel now
that you've stretched,
and explored your internal
emotional experience?
And that's great,
in a lot of ways.
It feels powerful.
It feels like you can go out
and achieve the
things that you want.
And that's in your hands.
But looking back,
I can see how that's really misused.
It's a way to get you to
ignore your gut feelings.
I had to tread really carefully.
Like I couldn't really say
what I thought to Mark.
He was very defensive.
And he'd fight back and say,
"You have to stop."
But I couldn't stop.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Keith used to
teach some of us that
on the path to enlightenment,
you'd reach this
barren wasteland.
Like,
you reach a space of nothing
before you find
this ultimate joy.
Joy feels like your,
your cells are gonna burst apart.
As a matter of fact,
the more pain we feel,
the more we feel,
uh, alive in a body.
My body was
starting to fall apart.
And I was having
blood sugar crashes.
And I felt like I
couldn't breathe
when I was in the classrooms.
And then Mark encouraged
me to talk to Keith.
- Yep.
- Well
Um-hmm.
- You know?
- Mm-hmm.
Right.
And it just
No.
Usually, I had just obeyed.
But at that point, my intuition was,
like, screaming at me.
It was like,
"You have to get out."
Before I left,
Allison invited me for a walk.
She was kind of
at her skinniest.
She looked like her back
bones were sticking out.
But I confronted her and I said,
"I think you're sick.
"You're not eating.
"Like, there's a problem,
and you need to address it,
and start eating."
And she said, "Well,
Keith is measuring my calories.
And he says as long as I'm
having my period, I'm fine."
And then she said
that she'd made
a lifetime vow to Keith.
And I think she said it was
a vow of devotion.
And she lifted up her shirt
and showed me her belly chain.
She said, "And this is to
symbolize the vow that I've made."
I certainly didn't
understand it.
But I didn't see
the darkness in it
that was really
there at that point.
I reached out to
someone who had quit
and who had kind
of dropped hints
that they knew
what was going on.
And I felt like they knew
something that I didn't.
I just said, like,
"Would you trust me enough
to tell me what you see?
"'Cause I don't intellectually
know what I'm looking at.
I know what I'm feeling."
And she said, "Well,
in a high-control group"
And I don't even remember
the rest of the sentence,
but, like,
when I heard high-control group
It I didn't know what it was,
but it just doesn't
sound very good.
And I actually asked,
"Do you think Keith knows?
Like,
maybe we need to tell him."
And she was like, "I think it's
deliberately designed that way."
And so I called him and I said,
you know, "Here's what I see.
"I see that all your
companies are
"built on abuse,
obligation, guilt,
and coercion. I
can't support it."
And he said
"Oh, I think, you know,
"there are some issues
that you never worked.
"You seem to have a
a commitment to being a victim."
We have a
fight or flight mechanism,
which triggers this
thing we call fear.
When we're fearful,
when we're making
decisions based on fear,
we are at effect.
It's the lowest
state of existence.
As you make your
decision based on fear,
now it's not your
psyche controlling,
it's the body and the world
controlling your psyche.
Now we have joy. What is joy?
And what's the opposite of joy?
We talk about joy and misery.
When someone is miserable,
they feel small.
Misery is constrictive.
It's self-oriented,
and it's destructive.
You know,
it's involved with suffering,
self-pity,
things along those lines,
or malice.
No.
So, I lost my opportunity
to talk to people freely,
because
I think a lot of
people saw it as
dishonorable and
weak that I left.
I feel unsure of myself.
We were taught you
need to push through.
It shows you how strong you are.
Like,
maybe I really am a bad person
for questioning and
being disloyal and leaving.
Maybe I'm the problem.
Hi. You've called Bonnie.
Leave a message and I'll get
back to you as soon as I can.
"Finally, I wish to remain
on good terms with the company
and have no ethical or unresolved
issues with NXIVM and ESP."
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I finally
opened up with a friend.
I just, like, let it all out,
and told her everything.
And she said, "You know,
you might need to break up with him.
You might need to leave him."
It's so sad that a
lot of relationships
go from being great
in the beginning,
to there's all this
resentment and anger,
and they just seem to get
kind of more and more bitter.
This helps you resolve those things,
so that you can
make your
relationship get better.
This marriage is one of the
most successful things in my life.
For certain.
I believe we have a really
successful relationship,
and it didn't just happen.
Hi. You've called Bonnie.
Leave a message and I'll get
back to you as soon as I can.
So you want to interview me or something,
or?
Light bulbs out.
Okay, so you're gonna sit there.
I'll interview you, and film you?
So,
um, Keith,
in the time that I spent with you,
it's clear that you have
a whole series of ideas
that are really amazing.
Well, first of all,
I, I don't know if the
ideas are amazing or not.
I
My assumption is that I,
I have some,
uh, relatively strong ideas,
uh,
that I communicate pretty well.
My name is Mark Vicente.
I'm a filmmaker from the
apartheid era South Africa.
George Lucas had as his
mentor Joseph Campbell,
an American mythologist.
I have as my mentor
an American scientist
and philosopher by the
name of Keith Raniere.
He asked me a question,
and the question
he asked me was,
"What is bravery?"
What does that mean?
Well,
there's a dictionary definition.
But in the deepest sense,
it means to be able to bear pain.
You know,
you look at all the people who
are allegedly enlightened.
All the different gurus,
whether it be the Buddha,
the Jesus, or, or Gandhi.
They're not just
sitting on a pillow.
They're not just
being fed grapes
and doing nothing, you know?
And struggle,
there's nothing negative about it.
It's the nature of life.
When I first met Keith,
he said to me,
"You know,
it'd be good if you just moved here
so we could, like,
have more of these conversations."
Albany, anybody? Albany?
It wasn't
really in Albany proper.
It was more north
in Clifton Park.
Everybody knew, pretty much,
where everybody lived.
So you'd always run into people.
And in between,
we're just the civilians.
You know,
those people who just live there.
And then at night,
you know,
you were expected to go to volleyball.
It was like, you know,
midnight to 7:00 a.m.
And around, um, 10:30 or 11,
the A team and Keith
Raniere would show up.
Help, help. Help!
Why volleyball?
I didn't understand
volleyball at first.
But it became a
big social event.
When intensives were going on,
you could have like 50,
60 people in the bleachers,
basically just watching,
EM-ing each other,
whispering to each other, talking,
and then in between games,
everybody would gaggle around him,
you know,
and ask him question
after question after question,
and we'd stand there for
like half an hour sometimes,
cooling down
while he was talking,
and then we'd play again.
You know,
he was like the rock star.
Is that okay?
And in the end, it was all about
- seeing him.
- tries to handle the ball.
That's what everybody
said. It's a chance to see him.
I basically try every
day to reach him.
We're gonna Let's talk about
projects. Let's talk about things.
And it's very frustrating,
because he won't respond.
And I go to volleyball,
like, three times a week,
and I'm talking to him and say,
"When are we gonna start?
When are we gonna start?
When are we gonna start?"
And it's like he just
Almost like he forgot.
And so I'm in this state
of complete insecurity.
Like, I just uprooted my life.
Six weeks go by.
On my birthday,
seven o'clock in the morning,
Keith Raniere calls me.
And he says, "Hey,
you wanna take a walk?" I mean
And I'm like fuckin' ready.
You know, I'm there.
I've got my recorder with me,
I've got a little
note pad with me,
and I'm so excited.
He's gonna work with me now.
Uh-huh.
Nancy said to me,
"You know what?
"It would be great if you'd
document Keith now that you're here,
'cause you know how to shoot and
everything. Could you document him?"
Mark is trying to film me.
I'll just keep on asking and
shooting until someone says no.
Okay. Very cool idea.
- You guys ready?
- Mm-hmm.
I started shooting,
like, in 2005,
and then a number of people
said to me they'd like to learn.
Switch it to "camera."
So I began this program
of like teaching people,
you know, how to shoot,
how to do sound,
you know, how to edit.
- Cool! -
And it grew to people,
you know, recording with audio,
you had people
shooting with video.
And then you had, like,
people that were basically
writing down what he said
and categorizing it, you know.
It was,
it was a whole operation constantly.
Good.
And he just said,
like, it's important to
document this because,
you know, we're talking about
the generations in the future.
Like,
at some point in the future,
my hope is this
work that we're doing
will end up in universities,
will end up in books.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if
the world could look back and say,
"Oh, that's what happened."
I take walks with him at like,
2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m.
And when we're done, I go home
and I transcribe the entire thing.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And in that moment,
I remember thinking,
this guy fuckin' knows me
like nobody has ever known me.
Like,
nobody in my family knows me. He knows me.
And I'm astounded,
and I remember going I
didn't sleep much that night,
and I was writing in journals,
and writing about, like,
all these things, and,
and how much that it impacted me.
And how much I
yearned to be this
I yearned to be like him.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Right.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Over time,
these ideas evolved into a screenplay
called "Carbon Crimes."
It follows Joe,
an idealistic aide to
a powerful Senator.
So, Joe,
who's spirited and impulsive.
Wants to prove he's good.
Passionate and hopeful.
Struggles with lying.
He meets Erik Einhaert,
a world-renowned scientist,
professor, and humanitarian.
Yes.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Einhaert takes
Joe under his wing,
and challenges Joe to
question all of his assumptions
about the entire universe.
So he gave me all the ideas.
And part of it was cool,
'cause it was like,
"Oh, now I'm like Nancy."
Like,
he's downloading all the ideas to me
and I'm gonna, like,
turn this into something, you know.
So she would
turn it into modules,
and I was gonna
turn this into a movie.
Mm-hmm.
I'm in heaven.
We're doing an EM in a movie,
which is all I
ever wanted to do.
I suppose I was like this
very eager student.
So for seven years of my life,
I call him every single day.
Hello.
- Hi. - Hi!
How's it going there?
Correct.
Right. Is that
Yeah.
I felt that
there was a closeness.
You know,
the highest IQ in the world is telling you
that you're the one.
You're smart enough to get me.
That's I don't know. It
could be pretty intoxicating.
Nancy said to me,
"It's extraordinary,
this relationship you have with
Keith." And I was like, "Why?"
She says,
"'Cause you're his only male friend."
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I have the
Vanguard. I have the Prefect.
- I have Sarah, my business partner.
- Namaste.
I have all these people that,
like,
anytime I need anything,
I'll say, "Listen.
Hey,
can I talk something through with you?"
They'll say, "Of course you can.
Let's go for a walk." You know?
Actually,
let's have everybody stand up for a second.
For the first time in my life,
I had the feeling of like,
I am with me, and I love me,
and I remember just being like,
"Oh,
my God. This is what self-love is."
This feeling is the thing
every single human
being in the world wants.
It's priceless.
Right.
You know, like
Yeah. Yeah.
When Bonnie leaves in 2017,
I'm like,
"What the fuck am I gonna do?"
If I took in what she said,
it was,
it was pretty horrifying.
Because I'd have to question
Questioning him
felt like I'd question
everything about myself.
And I wanted her just to stop.
Like, "Can we stop? Can we
not talk about this right now?
Can we,
can we talk about it some other time?"
And she was insistent.
I was like, constantly,
every day,
trying to get him to understand.
Putting evidence
in front of him,
begging him to listen,
begging him to read cult books.
He begged me to
not keep pushing him,
and to let him have
his own process with it.
But he was still
talking to Keith.
And I was like,
"Fuck." You know, like, all
All the work,
all the progress that I was
trying to make with him would then be,
like,
flushed down the toilet.
You know what Bonnie said to me?
Like, "What will it take?" I said,
"Data."
Soon after I left,
another person
left and came to LA,
and we started talking
about everything.
She gave me information
about things that she'd seen
that were very concerning.
And she agreed to talk to Mark.
Mm-hmm.
I'm like,
"What the fuck is going on here?"
There's something wrong.
Keith is amazing,
but something is fucked up.
Mm!
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yep.
It was very hard,
because you're going
up against the leader.
And in this case,
a leader who had spent 12 years
working his way into my psyche.
Yep.
- Boom. There you go. Yeah.
- Oh, yeah. That felt good.
Right.
Um
Yes, yeah.
I I
You feel
like you're going crazy.
He got my best friend
to basically spy on me.
Every single thing that
I was suspecting him of,
I kept on explaining it away,
like,
maybe there's a good reason.
That day I allowed myself
to like question,
what if there's not?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
He's lying to me.
Twelve years of
spending time with him,
thinking that every single
thing that comes out of his mouth
is honest.
Wait, okay, so that's a lie.
What if it's not the only one?
It was like there was
a crack in the dam.
You collapse in a puddle
of, of horror and shock.
That's waking up.
It's a very,
very deep and disturbing
dark night of the soul.
We went for a hike,
and he said to me,
"My eyes are open,
and I want you to know that I
am loyal to you above them."
And for the first time,
he started asking me questions
about what I thought.
Hello, this is Mark.
Please leave a
message after the beep.
"Dear Keith, Nancy,
"and members of
the executive board,
"as I've expressed in many
different ways over the last years,
"I've had strong aspirations
"to return my focus
and effort to my career.
"As such,
I am resigning from ESP.
"With respect to the centers,
"I will be discussing
my transition with Sarah,
"and I will apprise the
Greens of which coaches
need to be transferred."
It was the point of no return.
And I now understand
I have to tell Sarah.
Mm-hmm.
When we
switched off the recording,
Sarah tells me that
she is in this thing,
that it's called DOS,
and then she tells me,
um, "They branded me as well."
And I remember going,
something like, "What?
They b They did what?"
What the fuck?